Stories to gather all those lost

the long version

This gathering of personal essays grew out of commentaries and stories that Ona Siporin has delivered through her regular features on Utah Public Radio, or that she has performed live for audiences around Utah and the region. They are short, evocative pieces, meditative in tone, taking up a range of subjects - including memory, travel, ethnicity, place, humor, love, conflict, and family. Siporin tells us that story itself is what we use to gather loved ones and experience to ourselves. This gentle function of narrative, and the voice of the storyteller herself, stitch these rewarding meditations together. Scott Smith's photographs offer visual counterpoint to the text. His images - sometimes haunting, sometimes humorous - are themselves meditations.